CANTON, Ga. — A Cherokee County man is holding onto hope as he waits to hear news about his mother, who is missing after devastating floods in Nepal.
Mary Sorensen, 60, of Canton, was on her way home, coming through the immigration center where we’ve seen videos of people being washed away in flood waters.
Sorensen was on a trip of a lifetime, her family told Channel 2’s Candace McCowan.
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“She was able to hike up to an incredible mountain with incredible views and swim in an incredible lake and experience all these amazing things that she felt would help her get closer to God and experience God’s grace,” Sorensen’s son Riley Wildeman said.
Sorensen went hiking in China and was on her way home last week when she sent a text to family saying she “thoroughly enjoyed the experience.”
“Then she ended the text with ‘I’m so grateful that you guys are my family,’” said Wildeman. “The group that she was with was able to confirm that she was in the immigration center at the time that everything happened.”
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The video of the catastrophic flooding, triggered by a landslide last Wednesday when a glacier broke off, shows the waters hitting the immigration center at the China- Nepal border, which is Sorensen’s last known location.
Wildeman was teaching when he got the news.
“I just kind of sat in a stairwell and just prayed and cried a bit and thought a bit in prayed some more,” Wildeman said. “We’ve prayed for a miracle the whole time. We’ve prayed for a miracle of her being saved, for her to be found.”
Sorensen is one of dozens of people in the Isha Sacred Walks travel group who are missing.
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The group posted an update on X that said in part, “It’s very unlikely that anyone could’ve survived the force of the flood.”
But Mary’s family is hopeful that the grandmother to 4 girls can make it home.
“There’s a God who will do a miracle that will bring her home,” Wildeman said. “My dad likes to say that if there’s anybody who’s going to come out of this covered in mud and pissed off, it’s probably going to be her.”
Sorensen was set to get back to the US to help her granddaughters with their first few weeks of school.
Wildeman says the family has heard from so many people touched by their mom’s story. For the people asking what to do, they say just to pray for Mary.
They’re working to get the word out to as many people as possible so they can keep an eye out for her.
Local groups like the Nepalese Association of Georgia are encouraging people to give through the official government website.
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